Posts taggedfinnish literature

I don’t normally quote cover blurbs in my reviews, but in this case it’s a pretty good description of the book: A postmodern Victorian novel about faith, knowledge and our inner needs. A “postmodern Victorian novel”, it turns out, is a novel set in a rural Kentish village inhabited by Charles Darwin, but told in a very innovative way. This is not a novel about a gardener so much as about a village, and the narrative voice slips seamlessly from one villager to another, even including jackdaws, chickens and the… Read More

The Brothers, by Finnish writer Asko Sahlberg, is the first in Peirene Press’s series of the “Small Epic”. The publisher also draws comparisons with Shakespeare and William Faulkner. No pressure, then. Surprisingly the book did not disappoint. It’s only 122 pages but does pack in a lot of story, including among other things warring brothers, family betrayal, sexual tension, death, illness, gambling debts, bankruptcy, attempted fratricide, blackmail, prostitution and the 1809 war between Sweden and Russia. And yet it never feels like a very dramatic book. The elements of the story… Read More